‘German regional banks supporting Iran exports’

Wilfried Schafer, the executive director of the German Machine Tool Builders’ Association (VDW).

A top German official says the country’ regional banks are providing support to industries that are exporting their products to Iran.

"Regional banks, in cooperation with the European-Iranian bank [Europäisch-Iranische Handelsbank AG] are supporting the companies exporting to Iran,” Wilfried Schafer, executive director of the German Machine Tool Builders’ Association (VDW) was quoted by media as saying.

“So, this is going to develop continuously," he told Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency.

Schafer made the statement during a press conference in Tehran, held to announce the EMO Hannover metalworking exhibition, to be held September 18-23.

He added that industrial cooperation between Iran and Germany had increased in light of the removal of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The official further emphasized that Germany had serious plans to train the Iranian workforce, stressing that this would help the industries in both countries.

“We plan next year to bring representatives from our association to Iran to help with learning and training Iranian technicians to help cooperation between Iranian and German partners,” Schafer was quoted as saying by Trend.

According to the official, last year a similar round of training was held in Stuttgart for Iranian workforce.

The training included one month of theory learning and two weeks of internship with German partners, and the Iranian and German partners signed technological contracts worth 12 million euros in the aftermath of the training.